Christmas Windows
by His Lil' Half-Blood Princess
Summary: We couldn't have been more than nine years old. The wind was cold and brutal. And we would go from window to window, looking at the things we wanted. The hardest thing for me is that she would get them, when I would not. A Severus Snape fic. SSLE.


**Christmas Windows**

It's been 20 years.

It's been 20 years and I can still feel the cold wind stinging my face as I walked down the city streets. I can still see the snow gliding down softly from the heavens above. I can still hear her laughing as she would run from store to store, pressing her nose and hands to the window.

I can see her clearer than anything else. The shocking red hair falling from under her pink hat, framing her lovely face perfectly. The rosy cheeks cold from the winter air. The green eyes sparkling every time she saw something else that she wanted.

If she were still alive today, would she have remembered me in every detail? As I do her? Would she still remember my lanky black hair, falling limply near to my shoulders? My pale face, cold and hard like ice? My black eyes sparkling every time I saw her?

Perhaps...

We would go from window to window, fighting through crowds of people and blocks of snow, slipping through dirty slush or making new footprints in a fresh layer of snow. More than once she would slip and fall. And sometimes, I would manage to catch her. My boots are new and they're stiff and hard to walk in, she'd say proudly, not wanting to admit that she had not noticed the black ice. I would shrug at this, seeing as though my boots were anything but new and I had fallen only once.

We went from store to store, pressing our faces to the glass and looking in until the owners told us to stop touching it. Like a tour guide, she would announce every store as we went down the streets.

And whenever she saw something she wanted, she would pull out a pen and a piece of paper and she would write it down, in hopes that she would get it. Sometimes, I would want it too. But that didn't matter. Because no matter how much I wanted it, I wouldn't get it.

I envied her so. She had money. She had friends. She had a family that loved her. She lived in a nice, big house in a good area.

I was vice-versa. I had no money. I had no friends besides her. I had a father who hated me and a mother who was too cowardly to admit her love for me. I lived in a small shack of a house, in an area where drunks and drug-addicts made up most of the population.

She would tell me so often that I didn't deserve what I got. You got pinned to the wrong suit, she'd say. I would laugh and look over my clothes. Nope. No suit. I got pinned to the wrong pair of ripped jeans, more like.

I didn't know whether I deserved what I got or not. Perhaps I did or Fate would not have given it to me. Instead, I would have gotten a manor and money. Or perhaps, things would be worse. I'd be on the streets with no where to go.

I would think about these things sometimes as we walked, if the stores were too boring or we had nothing to say. Thinking about how wonderful or terrible my life would be if it was different...

And when the busy streets filled with people and stores turned into abandon roads filled with old warehouses and littered sidewalks, we would start our way back home. It was getting darker earlier now and the days were shorter and colder. She would shiver and huddle close to me, her breath lingering in the air. Sometimes, she'd even hug me, just trying to get warm. And I would savor every moment. Just holding her. It was one type of physical contact I would never reject to.

I would walk her home. Sometimes, we'd be late. Her mother would rush out, her hands wringing nervously and she would grab her youngest daughter into an embrace. As she hugged her, she would sneer at me, then lead her daughter towards the house. Why do you hang around with that boy all the time? she would say. Lily would start to object, but her voice would fade off as she walked farther away from me. Her sister would smirk at me happily and then skip off towards the house. Her father would usually say nothing, but other times, he would snap something at me.

It seemed that nobody cared for me except for Lily.

That's why, all those days that we would spend together were, are, and always will be, very precious to me.


End file.
